2007 Tropical Weather Review

2007 turned out to be a relatively quiet hurricane season for those with interests along the Eastern and Gulf Coasts of the United States. Below is a short summary of the season worldwide with select HurricaneMapping datasets from the most notable storms of the year to download for use in Google Earth and ESRI's ArcGIS.

Atlantic Basin

The Atlantic Basin saw a total of 14 named storms and 6 hurricanes in 2007, though Humberto was the only storm of hurricane strength to make landfall in the US. The two most intense storms of the Atlantic season—Hurricanes Dean and Felix—instead struck devastating blows to Central America and Mexico.

Hurricane Humberto Special Advisory #4 (Thursday, 9/13/07 at 12:45am CDT) indicating that the storm has become a hurricane just before landfall:
(HurricaneMapping files for this advisory in KML format | Shapefile format)

Hurricane Dean Advisory #32 (Monday, 8/20/07 at 11pm EDT) as the tropical storm-force winds of this Cat5 storm are just beginning to reach the Yucatan Peninsula:
(HurricaneMapping files for this advisory in KML format | Shapefile format)

East and Central Pacific Basins

The East Pacific Basin’s most significant storm of 2007 was Hurricane Henriette which crossed the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula as a Cat1 and then entered the mainland Gulf of California coast as a strong tropical storm. In August, Hurricane Flossie bypassed the Big Island of Hawaii just 100 miles to the south.

Hurricane Henriette Advisory #20 (Tuesday, 9/4/07 at 8am PDT) just before first landfall on the Baja Peninsula:
(HurricaneMapping files for this advisory in KML format | Shapefile format)

Hurricane Flossie Advisory #20 (Monday, 8/13/07 at 5am HST) with a hurricane watch issued for the Big Island due to potential threat from the then Cat4 storm still 36 hours away:
(HurricaneMapping files for this advisory in KML format | Shapefile format)

West Pacific, South Pacific, and Indian Ocean Basins

Typhoon activity in the West Pacific remained steady throughout the year, with 22 named storms through the end of November. Super Typhoon Wipha prompted massive evacuations in China in September when initially projected to strike Shanghai. And HurricaneMapping’s newly-added Indian Ocean coverage recently tracked the most significant storm of 2007—Tropical Cyclone Sidr which devastated the low-lying nation of Bangladesh in mid-November.